The Everchanging Soul Of Man
...gives the reader a brief view into the soul of the man. He is a broken man harboring a soul filled with contempt for women and himself, for needing them. He cares little about life, love or emotion and only lives for the next inevitable conquest. He doesn't know of true friendship or even of mutually acceptable companionship. Dmitri sees his world as a dark place that is going to forever revolve around sadness. Chekhov then takes the story and its main character to another level. The author begins to let us into the realization that life can change. A person can change; his soul or being can evolve ever so slightly with the influence of another. In this story it comes about with the introduction of a woman, a member of the "lower race". At first Dmitri sees this woman as a beauty with a "slender, delicate neck and fine grey eyes" however this doesn't stop his mind from registering that "there's something pathetic about her". His distrustful and malevolent soul refuses to allow a solely beautiful thought from infesting his dark mind. He must find something wrong or sinister about her in order for his world to stay in rotation. Something that allows her to fit into his conditioned state of existence, that of animosity towards all others. Chekhov then allows the story to evolve naturally. The lovely, or rather disconnected couple go out on dates and spend every waking moment with each other becoming increasingly isolated from the notions that they had thought to be reality. Slowly the antihero, Dmitri, begins to acquire what normal folk would consider a soul. It is only at the moment of her departure that Chekhov beholds this to the reader. "Gurov, standing alone on the platform and gazing into the dark distance, listened to the shrilling of the grasshoppers and the humming of the telegraph wires, with a feeling the he had only just waked up". Waked up from the reality that he perpetuated through animosity and anger. He began to realize that there was good inside of him after all. He was not a heartless creature that used all others for his immediate needs. He woke up to his true soul. "He was moved and sad, and felt a slight remorse". He gained feelings for another human being that he was never capable of before. Feelings for a woman, one of the "lower race", one of the very things that he despised in this world had gained access into his being. Showing him the abilities he had to accept and love others. No longer did he fight his soul's true destiny, for he had no power to do so. His new love was no longer with him but "she accompanied him everywhere, like his shadow, following him everywhere he went". Whether this is Chekhov's way of saying that ignoring your true desire is impossible or whether he, Dmitri, just couldn't get this woman out of his head is up in the air. However, either way it shows that a man so hell bent on pleasing only himself all but a few months prior was now so overcome with pure love that he couldn't release the thoughts like he had all the others. He had changed. He could no longer just use a woman and throw her to the wind. Now this new feeling possessed him: his soul had grown. Chekhov goes on to explain how Dmitri followed his heart to see his love. Knowing that it could never work for he was married, as was she. That this relationship would only end in pain and anguish. And yet, he still goes to her. He fights off the instinct to just let it be, as he had in the past. He doesn't want to lose whatever i...